Remember that time Elon Musk ? That project, now called Optimus, is — Tesla’s second AI Day, just over a year after the bot’s initial announcement. To meet its goal, and have a working prototype by the end of September, the robot project has . Musk has . It can’t just be catgirls though, right?
A delve through Tesla’s recent job postings helps shed some light. Not only has the company cribbed Autopilot engineers for Optimus, . The company’s goal is to “build humanoid bi-pedal robots at scale to automate repetitive and boring tasks” — which sounds a lot like the jobs performed in a vehicle manufacturing facility.
Tesla is hiring across the board for its robot endeavor, from up to program managers, engineers, and even a , which is objectively one of the cooler job titles out there. Nearly all of these positions involve the terms “scale,” “capacity expansion,” and “millions of humanoid robots around the world” — Tesla clearly sees a market for Optimus.
But what will those buyers actually be looking for? ASIMO never found a market, and Boston Dynamics’ bipedal robots haven’t gotten the same as its . Does Tesla think robots are needed to be ? ? Or just another way to , without retooling those lines to accommodate purpose-built bots? Personally, my money’s on the latter. Maybe the catgirls will be exclusive to Elon.